ERA12LA252 · NEW Kolb Aircraft Co MARK III CLASSIC
NEW Kolb Aircraft Co MARK III CLASSIC · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED) to Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA252
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
NEW Kolb Aircraft Co MARK III CLASSIC
- Aircraft type
- New Kolb MARK III CLASSIC
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N528DJ
- Operator
- Kratina Kevin G
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED), Deland, FLTo Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED), Deland, FL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (total)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental amateur-built airplane, with a carburetor-equipped engine, was airborne for about 1 hour under clear skies when the pilot attempted to land at the departure airport. While at reduced power, and during a traffic pattern turn from base leg to final, the engine lost power. The pilot deployed the airplane's parachute system, and the airplane settled into trees. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preexisting mechanical anomalies, and an estimated 1 gallon of fuel was found in each fuel tank. A representative of the kit manufacturer examined photographs of the fuel tanks with the fuel remaining and indicated that the amount there was not enough to unport the tanks during a turn. He also noted that if the tanks did unport, there still would have been 3 to 4 minutes of fuel in the lines at cruise power plus additional fuel in the carburetor bowl. Temperature and dew point at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power. The pilot did not check carburetor icing probability before the flight, and the engine was not equipped with carburetor heat.
Probable cause
The pilot's lack of preflight planning for potential carburetor icing conditions, and the subsequent flight in those conditions in an airplane not equipped with carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA252
- Event ID
- 20120324X70622
- Case number
- ERA12LA252
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 08553c36e843f73a78eef07f5d4527f14a17a74ef31994987ef5c6fb4df96982; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:33:25.528Z.